


Like Home

by skylarkblue



Series: In the Family Way [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2066217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylarkblue/pseuds/skylarkblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grant Ward takes his daughter for ice cream. And because this is his life, it - of course - goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Home

Grant Ward knew he wasn't the best father. He tried, damn it, he tried hard. But he'd never had what one could really call a good childhood; neither had Skye. Muddling their way through this was complicated to say the least.

But if there was one thing he was good at, it was ice cream.

"You all strapped in?" he turned around in the driver's seat to look at his daughter. She gave him a wide grin, showing off the gap in her teeth. She'd lost the tooth just two nights before - it was her third. She'd proudly shown off the gap to conceivably anyone that had even been vaguely interested, including, but not limited to, Coulson, FitzSimmons, May, her mother, her little sister (who was barely old enough to crawl, let alone care), the postman and the woman who lived across the road.

He started the engine, pulling out of their driveway slowly. Suburbia still didn't quite sit right with him, but at least they weren't there all year long. Every so often when Phil dropped by he'd call in a favour and ask one of them to join him on the Bus for a week or two, for some superpowered mess or alien invasion. Skye tended to think it was because the team needed their expertise. Grant knew it was because Coulson knew just how goddamn bored the two of them got.

That wasn't to say he didn't love his life. He did - and his kids. God, the two of them were the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. But the banality of it, the mundane day in day out routine…it drove him mad, sometimes, a little bit. He’d begin craving action, a gun in his hand. Worse things. Just something familiar to get him by.

“Daddy?” Lian called from the back seat. Ward blinked, shaking his head to clear his thoughts, and turned to face her.

“Yeah, sweetheart?” he said with a smile. She grinned back again.

“We’re here, daddy.”

He looked up to see the familiar sign of the ice cream parlour greeting him. He wasn’t quite sure at what point he’d parked the car, but she was right. “So we are. Come on, then.”

He got out of the car and opened the door, reaching over to unclip her belt. She clambered out and jumped down from the car with a slight bounce in her step, turning around to close the door. It didn’t quite catch, though, so he opened it just enough to force it so it would close properly. Lian grabbed his hand, winding her slender fingers through his, and swung their hands back and forth as they walked up to the doors.

He opened it for her, letting the seven-year-old push past him and make her way up to the counter. She crawled up onto one of the stools that lined it, waving to the boy who was working there. Ward allowed the door to close behind him and joined her, placing a hand on her shoulder as he looked up at the menu. “What do you want?”

“Strawberry!” she exclaimed, dropping off the stool so she could examine the flavours through the glass. He wrinkled his nose, trying not to laugh. She’d gotten her terrible taste in ice cream off her mother. Fitz only encouraged it.

“What about chocolate? Or mango? Cookie dough?” He leaned against the counter, smiling as she looked between the different flavours, sounding out names she didn’t recognise under her breath.

“Strawberry,” she said insistently, glancing up to him. “What’s citrus?”

“Like oranges and limes,” he replied, glancing over the flavours. “Anything else?”

“Mint.”

Some small part of Ward’s soul groaned. Strawberry and mint was almost certain to make her feel sick, but he’d told her before they left she could have anything she wanted. Curse the day Fitz had introduced his daughter to mint ice cream. “Mint it is.”

Lian moved away, towards their booth. They came here at least once a week and sat in the same booth every time. The first time he’d walked in, after a brief assessment of the window placement, multiple doors and layout of the room, Ward had gravitated towards one of the two booths in the room with a seat that had a back to the wall, tucked away to the left of the counter so it couldn’t be seen immediately from the door, and a good distance away from the windows. It gave him a good view of the room as a whole and the people in it. It was the only way he was able to relax when out with his girls.

“I’ll be there in a second, alright?” he called after her, turning back to the counter. Lian took after her mother in terms of personality as well as ice cream choices; she was chatty, bright and sociable, and always willing to make friends with any person who spoke to her. It put him on edge, but Skye would just laugh and tell him that that was how little kids were. He wouldn’t really know.

As the small line shuffled forward, he looked over to the booth to make certain that she was fine.  She was sitting in the booth, legs swinging back and forth, grinning widely at the woman sitting in the next booth over. She was speaking, but there was enough distance between them that Ward couldn’t hear what his daughter was saying. He took another two steps forward, sighing impatiently. There was still another person in front of him waiting to order, three more waiting at his right for their ice cream.

He glanced over again; the woman Lian had been talking to had left, and – and so had Lian. He stepped out of the line, looking around the booth, but his daughter was nowhere to be seen. Ward took a deep breath, lightly touching the shoulder of a nearby woman.

“Excuse me,” he said, his left hand clenched into a tight fist. He tried to relax it so as not to put her off. “My daughter was just sitting here a moment ago, and now I can’t seem to find her. Would you mind checking to see if she’s gone into the bathroom?”

“Not at all,” the blonde smiled at him. “What’s her name?”

“Lian,” he replied, giving her a tight smile in return. The woman stood and walked over to the restrooms as he looked over the ice cream parlour once more, but Lian wasn’t in the room – he only had to skim it lightly to know that, but still he looked at the face of every small, dark-haired girl, thoroughly checking none of them was _his._ His chest felt constricted and he took another deep breath, trying to steady himself. It was fine, he told himself. She’d just gone to the toilet and hadn’t told him.

“I don’t think she’s in there, sorry,” the blonde returned with a slight frown. Ward thanked her and crossed the room at a brisk pace, stepping out the door and looking over the street outside. The midday sun was bright overhead, the street filled with busy shoppers and young families, grandparents clutching the hands of small children, teenagers lounging about in doorways, all talking to each other in that too-loud way teenagers always seemed to. Lian was nowhere to be seen.

As he turned back toward the parlour, his phone gave a sharp ding, and a moment later another. He pulled it out; two texts from an unknown number. The panic in him only seemed to rise as he unlocked his phone and skimmed over them.

It took all his strength not to throw the phone into the nearest window.

The first was a text, short and simple: _Hello, Agent Ward._

The second was an image. It couldn’t have been taken any more than four minutes ago; It showed Lian, his daughter, against a solid white background – probably the inside of a van – with the barrel of a handgun pressed to her temple. She was glaring into the camera, her brow furrowed.

It dinged again.

_If you wish to see your daughter alive again, you will give us eight hundred thousand in cash._

Ward took a few more deep breaths to steady himself, aware he was hyperventilating. This couldn’t be happening – not now. Not today. This shouldn’t be happening. He stuffed the phone back into the pocket of his leather jacket, one clenched fist slamming into the bricks of the nearest building. His knuckles throbbed. It cleared his head.

He flexed his hand, restraining the urge to hit the wall again; grit stung in the abrasions across the back of his knuckles. A few people were staring, muttering to each other, as he strode towards his car and ripped open the door, slamming it shut behind him with enough force to rattle the open windows. He pulled the car out and sped off towards the city, gripping the steering wheel as he tried to calm himself enough to think straight. Logically Ward knew he should call the police, call Coulson, call Skye, but in the moment he didn’t want to do any of those things – he just wanted to find the people who took his baby and make them _hurt._

Frustration crawled its way into his chest, radiating through his skin until every inch of him was consumed by rage. His grip tightened until his knuckles were white, irritating the broken skin on his right hand. He pulled over when he reached a mostly empty street adjacent to a park, leaving the car running as he dug around in the back of the car to find Skye’s spare laptop. As it started up he connected his phone to it, pulling up the voice recognition and GPS programs.

He called the number the texts had come from, putting it on speaker as he waited for them to pick up. Anger rose in him again; the fact that they hadn't bothered to block their number meant they _wanted_ to be found. They were toying with him.

"Hello? Daddy?"

"Lian," he inhaled sharply. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"

"Da-"

There was a scuffle. He closed his eyes and waited, counting backward from ten. When he got to three, a new voice, a man's voice, came from the phone. "Agent Ward."

"Where's my daughter?"

"You'll get her back when you give us our money. We're changing location every half an hour, Agent Ward. We're only settling once we've received confirmation you have the cash."

Ward laughed. It was dark, with no humour in it, and it unnerved even him. "You'll stick to the city. I'll get your money."

He hung up as the laptop beeped at him, bringing up a map with two locations pinpointed on it along with what appeared to be an arrest record. An image popped up to the left of the screen, showing a bulky man with three scars on his neck; the file said he was a gun for hire.

Ward knew that the man on the phone was not the idiot behind taking his daughter. He slammed the laptop shut and threw in on the back seat, getting back into the car. Both locations had been warehouses in the industrial district, but one was by the tracks, and there had been no rattle of carriages in the background of the call. He glanced to the clock and pressed his foot on the accelerator. Yes, during the time of the call the twelve-thirty north train would have been coming in.

He left the car a street away, digging around in the back until he'd armed himself with three handguns, four spare clips tucked into his jacket, a thick hunting blade strapped to the inside of his leg. He let the two holsters around his chest hang empty, leaving his third gun at his waist. It was just covered by his jacket, hopefully giving him some element of surprise if he needed to use it.

The building was fairly nondescript looking as far as warehouses where kidnapped children were kept go; it was made of brick, painted white, with a slanting roof. There were patches where the fading paint had peeled, given the building an unkempt look. Ward took none of this in, marching up to the door and kicking it in with all the force he could muster.

He barely blinked as he fired three shots, not stopping to check if they'd hit their marks. He heard two heavy thuds and continued on only to be grabbed from one side. With a swift kick and sharp elbow to the face, he fired another shot across his body. Whoever had grabbed him went limp and he tossed the body aside, raising his guns for the next pair rushing at him.

The gun in his left hand jammed just as the woman got close enough to strike him. He dropped it, twisting away from her hits, feeling three sharp jabs to his ribs that made it harder to breathe. He used the butt of the other gun to hit her jaw; the pop that sounded was satisfying in a way he couldn't explain. Her partner landed a punch to his nose that crunched unpleasantly as hot blood spilled across his chin and upper lip. He grinned and dodged the next, dropping his Glock in favour of using his fists,  ignoring the sting of his already sore knuckles as they forced his enemy into the ground. The blood on his face and pain in his hands felt like home.

After a moment he realised no one else was coming at him, and he paused, reaching for the handgun that still worked. He stood in one fluid movement, turning his head to either side to crack his neck. His eyes searched the room as he suddenly remembered his mission. Lian was sitting on a chair across the room, two men standing either side of her with guns drawn. One had his weapon pointed at her head. The other had his pointed at Ward.

Ward raised his gun and pointed it right back, chest heaving. The two men shared a look before the second cocked his gun, ready to fire it straight into Ward's chest.

"Lower your weapon, Agent Ward," the first called across to him. "We're not afraid to shoot."

"That's funny," Ward replied with a straight face. "Neither am I."

He let his gaze drop to inspect Lian for injury. She appeared shaken, but for the most part nothing seemed wrong aside from slight dishevelment, a small scrape beneath her chin. He looked back up to the men guarding her. One was sporting the beginnings of a black eye. He titled his head toward him, keeping his gun steady. "Did my daughter do that?"

From the sour look in he got in return, he knew the answer. He was a confusing mix of proud and unhappy, but for the most part Ward was just glad she was okay. If they had caused her any harm, he wouldn't even think twice about killing them - but first, he had to get out of this standoff.

As he considered this, he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel press into the back of his neck, tilting up so it dug into the base of his skull.

“Hello, Agent Ward.” The voice was all too familiar, one he hadn't heard in a long time.

“Raina,” it practically came out a growl. “I can’t say it’s good to see you.”

“That would be because you can’t see me.” Raina’s tone was bright, almost conversational. “Lower your weapon and turn around.”

He let his arm come down slowly, mouthing to Lian that it was okay. He holstered the gun, holding his hands up above his head and turning carefully to face Raina with them in the air. She gave him a smile and kept her gun trained on his head, finger left away from the trigger with deliberate care.

"Isn't that better?" she asked brightly. There was a splash of red across her yellow dress, marring the white flowers patterned across it. She must have been standing next to one of the guards - but he hadn't seen her there. "How are you, Agent Ward?"

"I've been better," he replied, eyes darting around the room. Raina quirked an eyebrow, her grin widening.

"I'm not going to hurt your little girl. I just wanted to talk."

"Start talking." He made no move to lower his arms as he considered the warehouse again. Any wrong move he made had the potential to put Lian in further danger, so if he was going to escape, he had to do it right, and do it fast. If he knocked out Raina, the two who had Lian could hurt her before he crossed the  room and grabbed her. If he drew his weapon and took out the two of them, Raina could easily shoot him, leaving Lian defenceless.

A groan interrupted his thoughts and he looked down to his right, where one of the men was struggling upright. Raina followed his gaze and pursed her lips before turning and looking over the room, brow furrowed as though she was trying to puzzle something out.

"They're not dead," she said carefully. Her dark eyes met his as the smile slowly left her face.  "John raised you better than that, Agent Ward."

He ignored the cold feeling inside his chest in favour of letting his hands drop to his sides, one hovering near the Colt he had hidden beneath his jacket. Raina lowered her gun and walked over to the two nearest bodies, running her fingernails down the chest of one as she inspected the wounds. She moved over to the next and flipped her over before straightening and turning to face Ward, a wholly unimpressed look on her face.

"You were one of the best we had, Agent Ward. I see marriage has made you soft."

"Not soft," he glared at her, struggling to continue ignoring her remark about Garrett. He tried to avoid any thought of the man at all, these days. He'd pushed them down, all the thoughts and feelings, into some deep part of him that remained untouched as much as he could help it. It was the only way he could get through the day, sometimes. "Better."

She was staring at him with something that seemed to be contempt, perhaps confusion. Ward stared back, trying to contain his anger. She was looking away again - he saw his chance and he took it.

He pulled the gun from his holster and fired two shots behind him, content as they hit their marks with a pleasing cry from each man by his daughter. Lian shrieked, but he focused instead on Raina, swinging his arm in a wide arc until his closed fist came into contact with her head. She barely managed to dodge it, flinching as it clipped the side of her skull, lashing out with a kick of her own. He brought both arms down with as much force as possible on her leg, wrenching it forward and bringing her tumbling onto the ground. She struggled onto her back, kicking up at him again as he pointed his loaded pistol between her eyes. Gently, he released his grip on her ankle and began to back away.

"I'm going to take my daughter now," he told her, not taking his eyes away from hers, "And I'm going to leave. I'm letting you live only because she is here. Please know if you ever try to harm her or my family again, I won't hesitate."

"Noted," Raina hissed.

"Lian, honey, can you move?" he called across the room, still keeping his stare fixed on the woman below him. Raina's eyes were unwavering, locked with his own as she squared her shoulders, lifting her head to fix him with a cold glare. It didn't match up to Skye's.

The sound of little footsteps answered him as his daughter extracted herself from the chair and jogged over to him, lacing her fingers through his. Lian looked back to the two men who had been guarding her, tilting her head as they groaned in pain, one clutching at his bloodstained shoulder like it was the worst thing he'd ever felt. Ward looked down at her; aside from a splattering of blood across her face, she seemed to be fine. It was good enough for him. He scooped her up into his arms, letting the small girl bury her head into his neck, her arms wrapping around his chest tight, gripping him like her life depended on it. He shifted her weight a little so she was resting more on his hip, gun still trained on Raina.

"I mean it, Raina," he said, pausing to kiss the top of Lian's head. "If I find anything has happened to her here, you'll be in the ground faster than you can say please."

"I'd still love to have that talk, Agent Ward," the corner of her mouth twitched up into a smile, red lips parting just enough to show a hint of a grin. "This has been an enlightening experience."

"Some other time." He sidled around her and walked backwards the entire way out of the building, holding Lian just as tight as she was holding him. As soon as Raina and the men were no longer in sight, he put the gun away and jogged down the street, rubbing Lian's back and murmuring words of comfort to her the entire time. Once they were back to the car, he ignored the backseat in favour of putting her in the passenger's seat beside him, where he could see her, keep her safe. He took a few deep breaths, climbing into the car and settling in as calmly as possible.

"Are you okay, Daddy?" was the first thing Lian said, looking up to him with her wide brown eyes. He stilled, frowning down at her. There was still a smear of blood on her face. He reached over and pulled a packet of wipes from under the seat, scrubbing gently at her face to get it off, wiping it from her hair carefully. She squirmed away, giggling. "That tickles."

"It's all gone now," he said gently, cupping her cheek with one hand. "None of it got on your clothes, right?"

She shook her head before pointing up at his nose. "You're bleeding."

He flipped down the visor, turning his head to either side. Yeah, he looked like shit. He grabbed another of the wipes, doing the same to his own bloody face, being much less gentle than he'd been with her. He winced as he pressed a little too hard on his nose, prodding at it carefully. It didn't feel broken, but that didn't mean it wasn't. He'd broken plenty of bones in the past and not realised it.

There were a few drops of blood splattered across his shirt, but it was nothing that couldn't be covered by his jacket. He leaned over Lian and buckled her seatbelt, adjusting it for a moment before starting the car. Ward glanced over to the clock; it was nearly two. Skye probably wouldn't expect them home for another half an hour. He tugged the sleeves of his jacket down over his raw knuckles, hoping he'd get the chance to clean them up before they got home. They were pretty bruised, at least on his right hand, and the two nearest to his thumb were still bleeding a bit. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"

"Yeah," Lian replied, watching the city go by out the window. "Hey, Daddy?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we go get ice cream?"

He tried not to laugh, but it still  bubbled out of him, a little bit hysterical. He turned the steering wheel to change their course to head back to the ice cream parlour, looking across at his daughter with nothing but a loving smile on his face. "Of course we can."


End file.
